


A spur of the moment thing

by futureplans



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Post 3x07, Smut, all my ke fics end up being hurt/comfort a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24395398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futureplans/pseuds/futureplans
Summary: She looks up, hoping in vain that the bus will arrive without a 20-minute wait, and finally realizes that she’s at the wrong stop. This is the bus for New Malden, the flat she hasnʼt been to since… Well, since Villanelle. Ugh. Now she’ll have to get up and pretend like she hasnʼt been waiting for 10 minutes for nothing. At least thereʼs nobody at the stop, aside from that woman who just arrived, with the fashionable dress and the blonde hair and-“Oh for Godʼs sake.”
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 52
Kudos: 516





	A spur of the moment thing

Eve sits at the bus stop. It’s the usual anticlimactic finale to all her eventful days. She has just returned from a one-day trip to Scotland, where she yelled at a terrified American, nearly killed a former KGB assassin, stumbled into Konstantin having a heart attack and finally came to a stop inches away from the woman she has been - running from? Chasing? It’s always one or the other - from the woman she has been  _ something _ , just as her train left the station. And then Villanelle waved at her. 

And also called her a few hours later, making it painfully clear that she has had Eve’s phone number this whole time. Just didn’t use it. Eve isn’t sure what to make of that, except that she should be more bothered about Villanelle having her number and less about her not calling. 

She looks up, hoping in vain that the bus will arrive without a 20-minute wait, and finally realizes that she’s at the wrong stop. This is the bus for New Malden, the flat she hasnʼt been to since… Well, since Villanelle. Ugh. Now she’ll have to get up and pretend like she hasnʼt been waiting for 10 minutes for nothing. At least thereʼs nobody at the stop, aside from that woman who just arrived, with the fashionable dress and the blonde hair and-

“Oh for Godʼs sake.” 

Villanelle looks up at her, affronted, like  _ she _ is the one being rude. “Hi, Eve,” she says pointedly, demonstrating the proper greeting. 

“Everytime you say that, I feel like Iʼm going to get stabbed or something.”

“I’ve never stabbed you,” she counters, putting just a little extra stress on the “I”. For someone who shot Eve in the back, sheʼs being very superior about the whole stabbing incident. 

“You might branch out.” 

“So,” Villanelle cuts in, letting the syllable linger in the space between them. “What a coincidence, running into each other at Aberdeen. What brought you up there? Taking a little holiday?”

“Youʼre annoying when you’re smug.” Villanelle shrugs, the picture of innocence, like she doesnʼt know exactly what Eve was doing there. “I went looking for you.” 

“You found me. Well done.” It would have been better a few seconds sooner, before Villanelle was on the train, or at least before the doors were closed and it was off. Then again, what would Eve have done? Jumped in there with her so she could be stuck with the assassin in a confined space again? “Are you back to that, then? Trying to find me?”

Eve wants to find a better way to admit it, because Villanelle always manages to make the whole thing sound so little like a professional investigation and so much like a…  _ crush _ . And what the hell, maybe it is. Eve doesn’t think she knows anymore. So she shrugs and gives her a boring old “Yes.”

Villanelle hums, absorbing the information. 

“So what else is new?” she eventually asks. Eve wants to laugh a little and she isn’t sure why.

“My husband was hurt pretty badly and now he won’t talk to me.” She also isn’t sure why she goes straight for that. She’s all over the place, today. She’s going to end up actually going to New Malden pretty soon.

“Emotionally?” 

“No, with a pitchfork.”

“Oh.” Eve watches Villanelle take a little breath, like she’s stumbled into an awkward point in the conversation and isn’t sure how to get out of it. Then her eyes light up. “Did you do it?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said he won’t talk to you, I figured it was related-”

“Dasha did it. To frame you.” She sounds accusing but it isn’t entirely undeserved, is it? Her husband was pitchforked because of Villanelle, and it pushed him away for good, although technically he was in Poland by then, and not returning any of Eve’s texts, so not much really changed. 

Why does she even want to blame Villanelle, anyway? She’s tired and the woman is sitting right next to her and her brain is so muddled after everything that she actually takes comfort from her presence. Like she’s so tired that she can’t muster up scared, or angry, or anything. It’s an annoyingly familiar sensation.

“Oh,” is all Villanelle has to say.

“I tracked her down to Barcelona and she pretty much confirmed it.”

“Wow, you’ve been busy,” she comments, sounding genuinely impressed, but completely unfazed. Nothing touches her. Eve wishes she could be more like her sometimes. 

Now  _ that _ is a thought she doesn’t want to analyse.

“You’re one to talk.”

This draws a little laugh out of Villanelle, and it makes her look so normal for a second. It’s weird. 

“Anyway, I took care of Dasha, so you’re welcome.”

“I know, I saw her on the golf course.”  _ Heard her whispered confession. Put my foot on her chest. Heard it crunch under my weight. Felt that twinge of impatience at all the world’s rules and restrictions, felt that they shouldn’t apply to me. _ “Had to leave when the ambulance came to carry her wheezing ass to the hospital. Kind of a sloppy job, huh?”

Villanelle’s eyebrows raise, taking in the criticism neutrally.

“It was a spur of the moment thing.”

“Why leave her alive?”

The composed face slips for a second. Under it is something strange, something Eve didn’t expect. “Long story,” Villanelle breathes out, following it up with a shaky attempt at a chuckle before she brightens up. “Did you like my cake?”

“It was how I found you, actually.” Eve wants to say more, to probe this strange Villanelle that has just exposed herself, but she is given no time.

“Well, that’s-”

“What have  _ you _ been doing?” she cuts in. She knows nothing, she realizes. There was Villanelle at the ruins, Villanelle at the bus, something in Barcelona, and then the train and the bus stop. In the spaces between, endless possibilities for anything to happen, to punch a hole in the Villanelle that Eve came to know. Who is sitting by her side now? “I mean, all of it. Since…” 

“Rome?” Villanelle picks up on the suggestion. Eve nods. She hums as she seems to mull it over. “I got married to a rich spanish lady, then Dasha crashed my wedding to make me work for the Twelve again.”

_ Married? _ Now that was a quick rebound. “Of course you did, I should have guessed,” she mutters sarcastically, running a hand through her hair. Is that stupid bus ever going to come?

“I’m a great catch, Eve.”

“You can be,” she replies simply. When you aren’t being insufferable, is the highly hinted at conclusion to the vague sentence. Villanelle seems to catch the hint, but doesn’t protest. “And after that?”

“I went back to killing people. Well, for money,” she adds as an afterthought. Eve doesn’t want to know more. “Then I met you in London and you kissed me-”

“I know, I was there for that part,” Eve cuts in impatiently.

“Well, I am the one telling the story and this is my favourite part.” Villanelle acts exactly like a child sometimes, and somehow that is much more effective at convincing Eve that she should never kiss her again than any number of murders under her belt.

“Fine, we kissed.”

“ _ You _ kissed  _ me. _ ” Eve resists the urge to roll her eyes at Villanelle’s very smug correction. “And I left you a gift, did you see it?”

Ah, yes, the gift of breaking and entering and violating her privacy. And also the talking heart. “Yes, I did,” she concedes in a deadpan. “What happened after that?”

“I did a favor for Konstantin because I wanted to…” She stutters to a stop, and it’s so strange because Eve has never seen her like this. She pauses, swallows dryly, gives a semblance of a smile that is so far off from the actual thing that she seems more like a psychopath than ever. “Because he is my friend and I like him so much.”

Silence sets in between them. Even Villanelle must know how weirdly she just acted. She looks off into the distance, blinking more than usual, looking like she’s just seen a ghost.

“You’re usually better at lying,” Eve finally chooses to say. There’s no point in ignoring it, even if she doubts that it will get Villanelle to tell her the truth.

“Well, the rest of the story doesn’t really matter, and I’m here now.” Villanelle smiles again, and it’s a little more convincing, like the thought of being next to Eve really does cheer her up. 

“Villanelle-”

“That’s your bus.” She gets up and flags down the large bus that Eve somehow managed not to notice. She’s really out of it today. When Villanelle turns to face her, there is a familiar smug smile on her face. “I remember, you see. You should go, we will talk later.”

Eve tries to say something, but her brain refuses to provide anything useful, and the pressure of the approaching bus somehow takes her over. Oh God, she’s really going to end up in New Malden. She’ll never get home at this rate.

“I’ll come to your flat sometime, we’ll pick this up.” 

Villanelle is up and Eve is still sitting, so she grabs her arm and pulls her up, escorts her inside, hand still on her arm, like she’s leading her home after a date. Eve sits down somewhere by the back, the bus half-empty this late at night. Villanelle hovers by her side, like she’s trying to come up with the proper, impactful goodbye. And then she freezes and sits by her side.

Great, now  _ Villanelle _ is going to New Malden too. 

“What are you doing?”

Villanelle nods very subtly towards a man a few seats ahead of them, who was outside at the bus stop just a moment ago. “I’ve seen that man before.” 

Suddenly she is all business, muscles tense and posture rigid, as if ready to strike at any sudden movement. Eve sees her eyes flicker, register the exits, the other people on the bus, the frame of the man that appears to be following them. It’s fascinating to watch, to realize that the Villanelle that lounges lazily, that seems to tune you out in a second, is always watchful, always observant, always aware.

There’s only one way for an assassin to last this long, Eve supposes.

It makes her a bit self-conscious, all too aware of how distracted she was feeling just a moment ago, how easily she loses track of things she really shouldn’t lose track of. What would happen if Villanelle weren’t here? Would that man just sit there and follow Eve home and be free to walk right in if he wanted, because half the time she doesn’t even lock her door? Jesus.

“You think he’s after me?” she finally asks, her voice as low as she can make it, but Villanelle still shushes her.

“I’m here, I will take care of it. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“Of course I have to worry,” she hisses back. “It’s a stranger, following me home. You think it’s the Twelve?”

“Maybe. But they had plenty of chances to kill you before, so why now?” Villanelle shrugs, like this is a casual philosophical discussion, rather than Eve’s life on the line. She turns to Eve, seeming to pick up on her nerves. “Eve, why are you so worried? I won’t let anything happen, obviously.”

“Well alright, as long as I have my knight in shining armor to save me from the problems that she creates in the first place-”

“You’re the one who decided to mess with the Twelve. It’s not my fault you were too obsessed with me to let it go. Now stop being annoying or I will leave you alone with the scary man.”

“I’m not annoying,  _ you’re _ annoying.”

“Oh, very mature.”

Maybe Eve should just take her chances with the scary man.

She glances at Villanelle, who seems to be fidgeting with something in her lap, and then realizes that sheʼs now holding something long and sharp and metallic and oh God, how does Eve keep forgetting? 

She knows that Villanelle is a killer, obviously, but her brain keeps splitting her into two. Thereʼs the Villanelle with the hidden knives and the contract killing and then thereʼs the other Villanelle, the one that chats with Eve and makes inappropriate jokes and steals her food and yes, theyʼre the same person. Obviously. But Eveʼs brain keeps compartmentalizing the knives. And then she pulls one out halfway through a ridiculous discussion and  _ oh, right. _

She goes quiet. She isnʼt scared, theyʼre way beyond scared at this point. More like sheʼs trying to give Villanelle space? To be with her sharp things? 

All she knows is that the last time she saw Villanelle with a knife, she murdered Aaron Peel, then made Eve kill a guy with an axe, then shot her and left her for dead. That’s traumatic, right? That’s good grounds for jumpiness and dissociation and yes, even fear. Even… flashbacks or something, probably. She should freak out when she sees Villanelle, really badly, and sure, there was all that smacking in the bus - she’ll probably have to come up with a new name for that incident, now that there’s another bus moment - but how much did it take for her to turn around and go right back to chasing her? Just that one moment? Just seeing her, once?

So maybe she goes quiet because Villanelle stabs people, for a living and just for fun, and Eve knows it, and compartmentalizes it, and when it comes down to it, is actually kind of fine with it. And that’s not a fun thing to acknowledge about yourself.

The stops come and go and they sit there in silence. Villanelle doesn’t try to make conversation, probably content to just focus on the possible threat and leave Eve to her own devices, but eventually she speaks up.

“Your stop is coming up. If he follows us out, we’ll lead him down some dark alley and get answers there. If he stays on the bus, I’ll see where he goes and meet back with you later.”

“Villanelle, what if… What if he’s just some guy who took the same bus as us?”

Villanelle chews on her lip. Eve isn’t looking at it directly, but she catches the flash of light as Villanelle turns over the knife in her lap. “I saw him before that. When I was tailing you.”

“You were tailing me?” Eve probably shouldn’t be so scandalized, since Villanelle always seems to know everything about her whereabouts. Probably keeps tabs on her, while Eve scours the Internet and every faded source she can find just to come within an inch of the woman and miss her again. God, she’d love to have her old resources back.

“I was strolling down the street in plain sight, you’re the one who never pays any attention to your surroundings. It’s like you’re not even looking for me,” Villanelle huffs, right back to annoyingly childish, and Eve gives up on the conversation right there.

They reach their stop. Eve gets out, then Villanelle, then the man, who loiters by the bus stop with his eyes on his phone. They walk off, headed not towards Eve’s flat but to the nearest alley she can think of. He lingers, letting the distance between them grow, then finishes up with his phone, shoves it in his pocket and starts walking. In their direction.

Villanelle looks completely casual, like nothing is amiss, pretending to make conversation while only handing out commands like “slow down”, “cross the street”, “stop here”. Eve assumes she’s testing their follower, who always finds some way to casually mirror them, but seems more and more obviously suspicious by the minute. If he’s just tailing her, he isn’t doing a very good job at being discreet. So it seems likely that his job is about more than just following at a distance. 

As they reach the alley, Villanelle suddenly picks up speed, pulling her along. They turn the corner and she is quick to push Eve behind something big enough to hide her, emerging just at the right moment to push their pursuer against a wall and push her knife deep into his leg.

Femoral artery. He’s dead already, Eve realizes. Just counting down the heartbeats until it actually happens.

“Who sent you?” Villanelle asks, voice cold and hard as steel. Eve has never seen her quite like this.

The man swallows thickly but says nothing, a thin film of sweat coating his forehead. Villanelle’s hand on the knife tugs, slowly, and his panic tells Eve that he knows all too well how important it is to keep the knife in.

“You know who sent me,” he rasps out, managing to sound threatening even in his compromised situation. He has an accent too, maybe French. 

“What do they want with Eve? Why now?”

“Eve?” His face, quickly going paler, scrunches up in confusion. “Who is Eve?”

The knife twists into his wound and Eve has a feeling that this movement is less planned and more a reaction to the unexpected news. Because if he doesn’t even know who Eve is…

“I’m here for you.”

Villanelle pulls out the knife and the blood pours out of him sickeningly. For a moment, Eve only stares, then Villanelle reaches for her arm and pulls her away, down streets that eventually lead to her flat. 

If Eve was going to have a flashback, this would definitely be it, right? Confused and out of place, with the image of blood engraved in her mind, Villanelle hurrying her along, guiding her, more in control than ever after a kill. 

“They’re after you?” she asks, instead of spinning out. “Because of Dasha?”

“Something like that. I’m a bit disappointed, really. I thought they’d send the girl.”

“What girl?”

“French lady’s protegé. She said her name, but it was in a really thick accent, so I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Are you going to take this seriously at all?” She wants to stop in the middle of the street and confront Villanelle, but maybe the dramatics should wait until they are safely inside.

“What do you mean? I am.” Eve isn’t sure how much longer she can compartmentalize, because Villanelle is still holding a bloody knife and already she is being her usual annoying self.

It’s barely a 10-minute walk to the flat, but Eve is exhausted by the time she locks the door behind them. “Is it even safe here?”

“Should be, for the night. After that, you should probably think about finding a new place.” Villanelle pauses to take a look around. The flat looks even sadder than usual, now abandoned for several weeks, and the dripping knife now sitting on the sink doesn’t really bring up the aesthetics. 

“I… kind of have, already. I’ve been staying with a friend, since the whole bear incident.” The look that Villanelle sends her is pure surprise, and that in itself is unexpected. “I thought you’d know, like you know everything else about me. Phone number and address and… bus. Just figured you’d know this too.”

“I’ve been a little distracted lately. I’m moving up in the world. Busy person.”

Eve says nothing. Instead, she sends a pointed look at the room around them. At Villanelle, so busy that she stalked Eve to her bus stop and escorted her home. 

She avoids Eve’s gaze for a while, then gives up and sits on the nearest chair. She looks a bit out of place, too fancy and elegant for this run-down apartment. It makes her look hollow.

“I don’t want to do this anymore. Kill people for the Twelve. For anyone.” She takes a deep breath, like that confession alone has dug something out of her that has been sitting there for too long, crushing her. Like she’s steeling herself to dig out a lot more. “I was going to get out with Konstantin. To Cuba. Then he had a heart attack at the train station, so I was going to get out alone. And then I saw you.”

Time stops. Eve knows it isn’t what she thinks it is, because she isn’t even sure what she’s thinking right now, but the way Villanelle says those five words is so painful and tender and accusing. Like it was Eve’s fault for being there.

“You are so annoying, you know that?” Villanelle did mention it in the bus, not long ago, but it sounds very different suddenly. “I made a whole life without you when I thought you were dead. And then Konstantin told me you were alive, so I thought, I’ll go to see her, prove I don’t care anymore. And then I saw you and I cared, a lot, and you kissed me. So annoying,” she repeats, sounding less and less like an insult each time.

“I was going to run away. For weeks, that’s all I’ve thought about. How I have to go. How I have to get the money, and trick the Twelve, and meet up with Konstantin and just go. Be free for the first time in my life. He said I’d have to give up everything to start again. He said I’d have to give  _ you _ up, so I did, because I needed it. I need this, Eve, I swear, I need it because I don’t know how to keep going the way I am.” She pauses, abruptly, like a hiccup. Her eyes are bright and watery and she looks a little like a caged beast, frightening but sad. “And then you were at the train station, I saw you through the window, for one second. With your hair all out of place and that stupid oversized parka and those shapeless, colorless clothes, looking like a homeless person as always, and none of it mattered anymore. Nothing. Just you.”

“Nothing?” Eve feels like she should say more, but she’s honestly too surprised. Not just Villanelle’s words, but the way she seems to be unraveling, right there in front of her. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. She doesn’t understand the Villanelle standing in front of her. Something happened while she was gone, and unless she tells her, Eve has nothing. No way to guess. No way to help.

“If I didn’t see you there, I think I could go to Cuba and never see you again. But now I’m here and I can’t want to be anywhere else. And that’s annoying, Eve. It’s rude. I have plans, big plans, plans that could ruin me if they go wrong, and every time I convince myself that you don’t need to be in them, you show up and blow it all away and it’s just you.”

“Something happened to you.”

It’s not the reaction Villanelle was hoping for, probably. Or maybe she wasn’t hoping for anything. Was just making it up as she went along. Either way, she looks almost haunted as she stares up at Eve.

She’s still standing. She should probably sit down.

“Yes, you’re so good at noticing that.” Villanelle sounds angry, but in an unfocused way. Not really at Eve. Maybe partly at Eve. “You always know that something happened to me, you tell me as much. But you never know what.”

She sits down on the edge of the bed. “So tell me what.”

Their eyes meet, for a very long time. The brightness in Villanelle’s eyes gathers into a single point, then streams down her cheek. A tear. Villanelle is crying. Eve has seen it before, of course, but this time it’s different. It seems too painful to be forced. What happened to her?

“I found my family.” Her voice cracks. She pauses to take in a shaky breath. Eve wants to reach out, touch her in some way, but something inside her tells her it’s a bad idea. It would pull Villanelle out of herself, break the spell, leave her untethered. “I thought they were all dead, but Konstantin found my mother, and that’s why I did him that favour, and then I went to meet her. In Russia.” She says something that Eve doesn’t quite catch, and it’s either a Russian curse word or the name of the town she visited.

“And what happened?”

“I killed her.”

“Oh.” Compartmentalizing. Eve really needs to stop doing it. Crying Villanelle is murder Villanelle. Same person. Only one of her. “Well, I’m sure you had your reasons.”

The look Villanelle sends her seems genuinely thankful. Eve supposes not many people would look out for Villanelle’s side of the matricide.

“I did. She left me in an orphanage, pretended to be dead so I wouldn’t come back. She hated me.” Her lips seem to twist around each word, painfully recalling the injustices. Eve imagines having a baby girl like Villanelle, lacking in remorse, in guilt, in empathy. No human connection. A little girl, in a little dress, with a knife in her hand like the one still dripping in the sink. 

What would Eve have done? Maybe she would have run away from the problem too. But she looks at Villanelle and pictures her being left behind, for the very first time, and her heart clenches painfully.

“My brother was happy to see me again, so she acted happy too, but then she told me I had a darkness.” She carefully enunciates the word, like skirting her way around a sleeping beast. She speaks it with distaste, nearly cringing at it. “That I didn’t belong there. That I took everything from her.”

She sits across from Eve, twitching in her seat. When she breathes in and out, her whole body moves along. Like an animated puppet. Like she’s barely restrained. Barely clinging to humanity. 

Eve isn’t scared. She feels Villanelle’s pain inside of herself, feels the tears brim in her own eyes. But she isn’t scared of the woman in front of her.

“So you killed her.”

Villanelle nods. Her eyes flicker around the room, focusing on nothing. Then they land on Eve, and that seems to ground her. Her twitching subsides. She keeps her gaze for a moment, breathes deeper. “And now I can’t kill anyone. It broke me. I keep thinking of  _ her _ .”

_ You’re not broken _ , Eve wants to say at once. But she wants to say it better. More convincingly. “You killed that guy.”

“That was different,” Villanelle brushes off without a second thought. “I had to protect you, of course I did it.”

Villanelle mustn’t notice how her words strike Eve. She keeps gazing about the room, distracted, absent, while Eve thinks. Really thinks. 

None of it matters anymore. Not when it’s Eve. 

And Villanelle doesn’t understand what love is. She can’t. She’s a psychopath. It’s obsession, it’s infatuation, it’s possessiveness. 

But none of it matters when it’s Eve. Not even the stuff that tears her apart. And maybe it isn’t love, but Eve wants to do it. To make it stop mattering. To make it stop hurting.

“You know what I just realized?” Her question jolts Villanelle out of the strange state, her gaze seeming to focus a little as it lands on Eve again. “Ever since you came into my life, it’s all been about you. You’ve been the first thing on my mind, all the time, and yet there’s still so much I don’t know. I’ve been obsessed - I guess obsessed is the right word - obsessed with you. It feels like we understand each other in a way that nobody else could, but there’s still so many gaps, so many voids, so much I don’t know.”

“I know. You always have so many questions.” Villanelle smiles and the sight brings unexpected relief. She looks like herself again. Amused, not quite serious, not quite teasing. Maybe a little teasing. Like, despite the fact that she has just as little knowledge of Eve as Eve does of her, maybe even less, she is sure she understands her. The core of her, what really matters.

“I do?”

“You think about me all the time,” she reminds Eve. The words sound a little like a confession, or like returning one that was made to her, or like a love letter.

“I do.” Eve hears it, in her own ears. Her words sound like that, too. It’s weird. She isn’t usually like this. Villanelle brings out the worst of her, mushy included.

“Shall I tell you, then?”

“Tell me what?”

“I don’t remember all of it, but you’ll help me with anything I miss, I’m sure. So where do I start?” She pauses, taps her chin and looks off in deep concentration. “What do I eat for breakfast, you wanted to know that. Hmm, whatever’s around I guess. I will eat anything.” 

Eve’s heart stutters a little, not just at the cheeky way Villanelle sounds out the words, like they have a million little hidden meanings. It’s the questions. It’s  _ her _ questions. And not to sound like a cheesy teenager in love, but  _ she remembered _ . 

“And then, what I think about when I kill someone. Well, that one’s changed a bit.” Villanelle pauses to show off one of her many grimaces, this one the one she gives when she’s sharing bad news that they both already know. 

“Before, it felt good. Really good. Like solving a puzzle, only instead of a boring puzzle, it’s an exciting murder. That rush of outsmarting everyone in the room and walking away from it untouched.” She thinks deeply, as if trying to capture something entirely abstract and put it into words. Eve has faith in her, Villanelle is very good with words when she wants to. “And there’s something exhilarating. I think it’s the control. Complete control. To look into someone’s eyes and know you determine when they die, how many breaths they have left, the exact moment when their body stops being a thing they move around in and eat and breathe with and starts being just a body.”

When she pauses, her lips quirk into a kind of nostalgic smile, which Eve should probably consider disturbing, but she can’t help that it just makes Villanelle look a little smaller. A little more like a person, a little less like a looming presence and harbinger of death. It makes her look like someone who just wants to sit down with a friend and watch a movie. 

“That was before. Now it’s like all the good stuff goes away and there’s just a voice in my head, my mother’s voice, and she talks about my darkness, and it distracts me from all the things I should be paying attention to.” Villanelle’s voice is still light. She speaks from a hundred miles away. Like it’s happening to someone else. 

“I don’t like it,  _ the darkness _ . The darkness that’s in me. It makes me feel… I know I’m different, not like other people, and I don’t mind it. I like who I am. But I’m still a person. I don’t like that people look at me and just see darkness, just see a monster, an agent of chaos.” Dasha’s words repeat inside Eve’s mind and she almost speaks them aloud.  _ Perfect killing machine. _ All that people see in her. “I don’t want to be a monster. I want to be me. You know?”

Villanelle goes silent and Eve is silent as well, although she feels like she should say something. Like that is the reason why Villanelle has paused. But she can’t say anything. She’s felt a lot of things this evening and they’re balling up into something she isn’t even sure how to name anymore, so she can’t spare the brainpower for saying things.

“Okay, what else?” Villanelle looks around herself like the answer is hiding behind Eve’s shelves. “Do I have friends? I’m not sure, actually. I think maybe Konstantin-”

Eve kisses her.

She realizes she has kissed her when she registers the sudden silence, and the way Villanelle’s perfume is now stronger than ever, and the pressure of lips against hers. She pulls back and clasps her hands together. Villanelle remains frozen for a moment longer.

“What did you do that for?” Her fingers rise, like they’re going to brush against her own lips, but stop halfway there. Then she just  _ looks _ at Eve, and it seems to pierce her through.

“I don’t know.”

“No, Eve, really. Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she repeats dumbly, not sure what else she can say. She really doesn’t know. “Because I wanted to. Because I don’t think you’re a monster.” Oh. That was it, wasn’t it? She laughs a little, because everything is so messed up by now, and she can’t even tell anymore whether Villanelle has moved down the scale of acceptable or it’s Eve’s scale that has been deeply shifted. “Or, if you are, then I must be one as well.”

“You are not a monster, Eve,” Villanelle reassures her at once, looking genuinely concerned. Then she lets out a little relieved laugh, and leans into the feeling. “Or maybe we both are.”

“Maybe we both are.”

Would it be so bad if they were? Wouldn’t that be the way to meet in the middle? What does Eve even have to give up that would feel at all like a sacrifice? 

Villanelle remains seated, doesn’t make a move to join Eve on the bed, or even lean closer. She picks at her fingers, fidgeting in her lap, like she’s eager to keep going but leaving it up to Eve to make the first move. 

Eve isn’t sure how to do that, suddenly. Now that she actually considers the possibility of giving in to these confusing feelings that have been tormenting her for who knows how long, the freedom seems to paralyze her. Does she just… do that? Do what, exactly?

“Niko’s gone,” she says uselessly. Why is she talking about Niko? 

“Yes, you mentioned.” Right, the pitchfork. 

“I went to visit him at the hospital. He told me to  _ piss off forever _ .”

Villanelle laughs, apparently more at ease now that the moment is over. Now that Eve has not only ruined but absolutely steamrolled the moment. Now that the moment is resting forever in its early grave.

“That sounds like him.” It’s a weird thing to say for someone who’s only met him once, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that Villanelle would say about someone she’s only met once.

God, Villanelle is just… Villanelle. Eve isn’t sure there are any words for what she is. 

“I knew you wouldn’t do it.”

Villanelle shakes her head instantly, like it never even occurred to her that Eve would think otherwise. Like she knows that Eve trusts her. And she’s right, isn’t she? Eve never doubted her, not for a second. Because she’s crazy and she’s either figured out the boundaries of the psychopath in front of her or fooled herself into believing so. 

“No, you’d never forgive me.”

This time, Eve is aware of the moment as it happens. Not quite in control of it yet, but she feels the air rush by her as she leans forward, feels the little breath of surprise as their lips connect, tastes Villanelle’s lipstick. It’s still new, to kiss someone who tastes like lipstick.

All of it is new. God. Why is lipstick what she focuses on? She’s kissing someone who murders people for a living.

And she really can’t bring herself to care.

“I learned that one the hard way,” Villanelle mumbles proudly against Eve’s lips and she really cannot express how much she doesn’t want to get into this right now.

“Okay, you should stop talking now, maybe.” She kisses her again, for good measure. Just because she wants to, really. Villanelle’s mouth opens and Eve isn’t sure whether it’s for kissing or for talking, so she pushes her tongue inside in hope of tilting the odds towards the kissing.

She tastes nice. Sweet.

Villanelle pulls away, less stunned and more proudly bearing a shit-eating grin. “But in a way, it was a good thing. Because if I hadn’t gone to prison for chopping off that man’s-”

Eve’s hand snakes behind her neck, brushes at the little strands hanging loose from Villanelle’s elaborate hairdo, then pulls her in so hard that her arms reach out for the edges of her chair to keep her balance.

“Please shut up now.”

Villanelle gives up on balance, tumbles forwards, somehow lands on Eve’s bed rather than inelegantly sprawled out on the floor.

“Don’t you like the sound of my voice?”

Eve’s fingers are sweeping the expanse of Villanelle’s dress, and she’s not quite sure what she’s looking for until she finds it, and it’s the zipper. 

“I  _ love  _ the sound of your voice.” Her voice is lower, rougher, and she feels Villanelle shiver against her at the sound.  _ Oh _ . Well, the feeling is mutual. She thinks of the little talking heart, repeating that same sentence again and again right by her ear. “It’s the things you say that I don’t always like so much.”

Villanelle’s laughter vibrates against her hands and every part of them that is pressed together, and Eve feels so much, and she wants to feel so much more.

“Please take off your ugly sweater, I have suffered long enough.”

Eve is on top of her now, straddling her waist, and she shakes her head slowly at the request. “What did I say about not talking?” But even as she says it, the sweater is coming off, and she’s preparing for what Villanelle will say in return but then she just says nothing. Just looks. 

Her fingers reach up and brush, very lightly, over the small scar on Eve’s shoulder. Where the bullet travelled straight through. She doesn’t say anything. She reaches for Eve’s hand, wraps her fingers around hers, pulls it back to the zipper, lets Eve open it.

She slips out of the dress, lies there in her lingerie - is she always prepared? Did she pick it out special, for her meeting with Eve? Shouldn’t Eve be allowed the same kind of heads-up? 

She looks down, at her own waist, at the thin white stripe that Eve knows all too well, although she’s never seen it. 

“Maybe it had to be this way.” Villanelle’s voice is dreamy, but steady. Her fingers trace her faded scar, the slight indent on the skin. “You had to mark me, and then I had to mark you. And then we’d be connected forever.”

“Through our scars?”

“The scars are the places where the outside got in, right? It’s where you got into me and I got into you.”

Villanelle looks up at her, hopeful. Eager for understanding. For communication. Eve nods.

“Can we find a less painful way to connect? Less bloody, maybe?”

“Well, love is painful.” Villanelle arches up, just enough to catch her lips again, and Eve returns the kiss, running her hands down the expanse of skin that Villanelle has exposed. She stops as she reaches her arms, feels something too rugged to be old.

“What happened?” she asks in a whisper. Opening her eyes, she sees the angry red scar, only half-healed. The stitch marks are uneven, the path of the scar jagged. Nothing like the surgical precision of Villanelle’s stomach, of her own shoulder. “Did you stitch it up yourself?”

“Hazards of the trade.”

“This is fresh.”

“Not all scars are love. Sometimes, when you have to do something you don’t want to, that leaves a scar too.” They’re sad words, made sadder by the way Villanelle recites them without pause, without sorrow. The wounds she suffers, the pain she endures, it’s just the way it is. The way life is for someone like her. “But I want to focus on the good stuff now.”

She kisses her again, hard. Scars forgotten for now, her fingers return to Eve’s body, to tugging all the clothes off of it. They dig into her skin, purposeful, hungry, like she wants to come closer and closer and  _ inside _ . 

Eve is in her underwear too, now. For a second she considers that she has never had sex with a woman before, then she considers the sudden realization that they are definitely going to have sex. Then Villanelle undoes her bra.

She knows that Villanelle only has two hands, but from the moment that she closes her eyes, it feels like her fingers are everywhere at once, brushing against every inch of Eve’s body. It’s just not fair but oh, she really doesn’t mind.

“We could have just- connected like this,” she stutters out. Still on top of Villanelle, she feels her body begin to move on its own, searching out friction, finding it on the curve of Villanelle’s thigh.

“I tried to. You stabbed me.” 

The sparks flying up and down Eveʼs body make it increasingly likely that she wonʼt need any direct intervention by Villanelle to get off. It makes it a little hard to focus on the conversation. Banter? Probably not argument, they wouldnʼt argue while having sex, would they? 

“I donʼt know, youʼre into knives.” It isnʼt her finest comeback. Sheʼs very distracted. Villanelle tries to flip them over but she resists and she isnʼt sure why. 

“Not around all my internal organs- Eve, you have to move or I canʼt get my hand in your pants.”

“Well, I like it up here.” 

“You are very bossy in bed.” Eve hums in agreement, opening her eyes just to catch the pleased smirk that lines Villanelleʼs face. Then she closes them again because sheʼs doing things. Nice things. Things that feel good. “I’m not letting you come on my thigh, that is an insult to my skills.” 

“Skills for round two?” she offers breezily, encouraged by the fact that, for all her complaining, Villanelle’s hands have not stopped squeezing every bit of her that can be squeezed.

“No, absolutely not, skills for round one.” 

And then the world is spinning and Eve is pretty sure Villanelle has used some sort of martial arts trick on her. Somehow she is on her back. Somehow, miraculously, neither of them has bumped into a wall or slid off the bed. Suddenly, the way to her underwear is unimpeded and Villanelle wastes no time.

Eve is a big woman. She can admit when she’s wrong.

And boy, was she wrong. Skills for round one. Skills for every round. She feels like the entire world is flickering in and out of existence in time with Villanelle’s strokes. 

“Any regrets?” the woman on top of her asks cheekily. Her first instinct is just to swear a lot, but she reins it in and looks for words.

“Fuck-” Okay, doesn’t completely rein it in. “I regret not doing this sooner.”

“Well, you-”

“Stabbed you, yes, I stabbed you, oh my God, we get it- oh my God,” she repeats for a very different reason as Villanelle’s fingers slide inside her and make her feel like she’s floating. She grips Villanelle’s back until her fingers scrape the skin. “Oh, fuck.”

Villanelle leans in closer, until her lips brush against Eve’s ear. “Eve,” she says her name so slowly, so temptingly, like she really is Eve and Villanelle is the snake in the garden and wow, biblical references, is that where her orgasms take her now? “Shouldn’t you apologise? For the stabbing and everything.”

“For the- apologise?” 

“You are familiar with the concept?” Villanelle speeds up, fingers curled up into Eve, thumb circling her clit mercilessly. Eve’s hands clench and unclench with no real purpose.

“I, uh-”

“Say sorry, Eve.” Her voice is hard but brittle, not in a threatening way but… just on the edge of controlled. Just on the edge of losing it. Eve shudders and convulses.

“S-sorry.”

“Say it like you said it before.”

That’s when she finally understands, and it nearly tips her over. She gathers her wits, pulls Villanelle’s lips to hers, whispers the words into her. 

“Sorry, baby.”

Villanelle groans against her lips, shivers, grinds against Eve’s leg like she doesn’t even notice what she’s doing. It’s all that Eve can take. She comes undone under pulsing waves of pleasure that run through her body until she can barely move. 

When she collapses, Villanelle pulls her fingers out of her and brings them to her own lips, licking them clean one by one.

“You like it when I call you baby?” Eve asks in a hoarse whisper, pleased to see Villanelle’s composure break at the word. “Oh, you really do.”

“Well, you like it when I stick my fingers inside you and-”

“I imagine lots of women like that,” Eve counters. Villanelle’s need to come out on top - in more ways than one - is predictable but at the same time endearing. And annoying, but when is she not?

“Fine. What’s  _ your _ thing, then?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to figure it out.”

It’s the first time either of them mentions the future, any possibility of a continued anything. It feels like they’ve been avoiding the topic, without even noticing it. Probably because all they have so far is each other, an apartment that will stop being safe by tomorrow, and an entire shady organization set against them.

“How do you feel about Cuba?” Villanelle suddenly asks. It’s transparent and vulnerable and they both know the answer before Eve says it. So she doesn’t say it. 

“Good cigars.” Villanelle makes a face. Not a fan of cigars, then. She lets her eyes slip shut and drapes a hand over them, still catching her breath. “Well, we have until morning to figure something out.”

“No, we don’t.”

“We don’t?”

“No, that time is reserved. For other things.”

“Hmm, what things?” 

She feels Villanelle reach for her hand and pull it down, to land lightly over her underwear. Her fingers seem to move on their own, cupping Villanelle over her pants, and she feels arousal build up all over again at the way she responds instantly.

“All the way until morning?” she eventually adds, since Villanelle doesn’t seem inclined to contribute anything beyond little whimpers. “Are you sure we can last that long?”

Her hand is grabbed again, this time to slip it slightly up, then under a waistband, then down again. She feels warmth against her fingers, slick and inviting. She feels Villanelle squirm a little under her touch, eager for more. 

“Trust me, Eve.” Villanelle’s words are undercut just a little by the way she pauses halfway through to take in a long hissing breath that escapes her in a moan. “I know what I’m doing.”

Later, much later, Villanelle steps out of the shower in nothing but a towel, still dripping onto the floor. Eve’s eyes take in the beautiful sight, already eager to feel her writhe under her again. 

Villanelle scans the room. Her face falls, impossibly quick. In one second she is soft and glowing with the aftershocks of pleasure, and in the next she is struck by despair. Eve nearly rushes to her side.

“What? What is it?”

She throws away the towel she was using on her hair, sighs deeply and unfortunately, pouts. Actually pouts. Like a child. “I just realized I’ll have to wear something of yours now. Please tell me you have anything at all that isn’t monochrome and dull.”

God, she’s annoying.

God, Eve loves her.

**Author's Note:**

> Come check me out on twitter @evesaxe ^^


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